Steve Bannon attends the swearing in of Nikki Haley as US ambassador to the United Nations.
Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus denied on Sunday that Donald Trump had removed two top defense officials from regular seats on the National Security Council in a reshuffle that expanded the influence of senior adviser Steve Bannon.

On Saturday, Trump signed a memorandum that gave Bannon a seat on the “principals committee” of cabinet members who shape US foreign and defense policy. The memo also relegated the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, two of Washington’s highest defense officials, off the principals committee.

Instead, the memo said, the chairman and the director would attend only meetings “where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed”.

On Sunday, Priebus said the defense chiefs would in fact be invited to all meetings. “They’re included as attendees any time that they want to be included,” he told NBC’s Meet The Press.

Former defense secretary Robert Gates, who served both Republican and Democratic presidents, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that the relegation for the defense chiefs was a “big mistake”.

“Under the law, only two statutory advisers to the National Security Council and that’s the director of central intelligence, or the DNI, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff,” Gates said.

“I think pushing them out of the National Security Council meetings, except when their specific issues are at stake, is a big mistake.

“They both bring a perspective and judgment and experience to bear that every president, whether they like it or not, finds useful.”

Susan Rice, who served as Barack Obama’s national security adviser, similarly expressed shock at the reorganization of the NSC. Rice tweeted that it was “stone cold crazy” to treat the chairman and director as “afterthoughts”.

“Who needs military advice or (intelligence) to make policy on Isis, Syria, Afghanistan, DPRK?” she tweeted. “And CIA?? Cut out of everything?”

She added that during Obama’s tenure, the vice-president never chaired NSC meetings, as it appeared the Trump White House was ready to allow Mike Pence to do so.

Bannon has drawn controversy for his role as the publisher of Breitbart, a website that has run racist and misogynistic articles. Before taking over the site, Bannon was a Goldman Sachs executive and early investor in the sitcom Seinfeld. He joined Trump’s campaign as chief executive after the ouster of Paul Manafort, a former lobbyist who quit amid scrutiny of past work for pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine.

Bannon has described himself as an “economic nationalist” and said he found inspiration in the works of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. In a rare interview last week, he told the New York Times that he considers the press “the opposition” and said it “should keep its mouth shut”.

On Sunday White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Bannon, who has no experience in government, was qualified by dint of his seven-year service in the navy in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

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“He is a former naval officer,” Spicer told ABC. “He’s got a tremendous understanding of the world and the geopolitical landscape that we have now.

“Having the chief strategist for the president in those meetings who has a significant military background,” Spicer said, “to help make – guide what the president’s final analysis is going to be is crucial.”

Spicer said Rice’s criticism was “inappropriate” and that Trump receives “plenty of information” from the chairman of the joint chiefs. The reorganization, he said, was meant to “modernize” the council and make it “less bureaucratic and more focused on providing the president with the intelligence he needs”.

Like Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, Bannon was appointed to a White House position that does not require Senate confirmation. On Saturday, Bannon and Kushner sat in on several phone calls between the president and foreign leaders, including calls with Russian president Vladimir Putin and German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey was one of a handful of Democrats to criticize the reorganization, writing on Twitter: “Chairman of the joint chiefs out, former head of white nationalist website, in.”

“With Bannon at the table for nat sec decisions, we can expect more politically motivated discriminatory actions like we saw last week,” he continued, alluding to the president’s order to ban travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries.